Life in the Baby-Sitters Club has never been this complicated—or this fun!

Let's set the scene.

I am 23.

I am awake at 1:30am on a Friday morning, sitting in my parents living room, watching a marathon of DVRed episodes of Jersey Shore I've recorded.

I am drinking lemon flavored vodka straight from a moose mug, because I am literally fearful that if I try to go to bed without being drunk I will stay awake all night thrashing and/or weeping in misery. I have been slowly siphoning my parents liquor every night after they go to bed. I try to vary the type I drink every night so they never notice the amount in an single bottle changes drastically. This is an exciting way to live, but soon I will have to buy my own bottle of liquor and hide it in my room so I can survive. When I do this, it will be the beginning of the end.

I would say life as a 23 year old doesn't usually involve this type of violent depression. Most often, I've found it involves a steady level of mild discontent I had previously managed with a combination of constant travel, emotional detachment, and morally questionable sex with coworkers.

Over the past week, however, a series of events has unleashed a torrent of overpowering sadness into my life. For the last two years, I have maintained a friendlationship. Like most Gen Yers, the transient nature of my life has created social situations so bizarre and so ambiguous that I am forced to invent words to justify most relationships I maintain. Today, after two years of being in love with my emotionally unresponsive male best friend, I told him to shit or get off the pot. Given, he lives INDEFINITELY IN SPAIN. so like. I mean, how long can I be in love with my gchat box?

I figured, well, I never see this dude and we communicate on a screen, so how bad could it be to eliminate him from my life?

Turns out, instead.......I JUST GOT RUN OVER BY THE EMOTIONAL PAIN BUS. I feel like there is a rock of horrendous pain in the void where my heart used to be. Or like this boy ripped out my heart, mortar and pestled it into a pate, spread it on a toasted Spanish baguette and ate it with a 9 ounce beer in a granite tapas bar.

This is shocking because, after a year of low-level misery over loving someone in Spain and fucking a bunch of dirty union men and drinking gin for dinner, I thought I was incapable of having feelings anymore. I thought I had done so many horrible things to myself in hotel rooms in Phoenix, that I lacked any ability to take my feelings seriously. Au contraire, I am devastated in an epic way I thought was no longer possible.

As I sit here in my parents living room, i realize. The cast members of Jersey Shore are more emotionally functional than anyone I went to college with. Most things they do make sense, they say what they mean, they seem to have a shared goal: act like a fool on tv to get famous. Despite a general bizarreness, their feelings never go unspoken. Uncouth, but real. Refreshing.

Can my life ever be as straightforward as life at Jersey Shore? Not if I'm pesudo-dating my gchat screen.